Sitting on the front porch listening to a White Sox game will be difficult this summer if the team is not on the air locally.

A South Side tradition may be ending if no one comes to save the day. It’s not a topic anyone wants to bring up at this weekend’s SoxFest, the unofficial kickoff to Year 2 of the rebuild, but a recent announcement by Atlanta-based Cumulus Media, which owns WLS-AM 890, was disheartening to say the least.

Cumulus is hoping to cancel its long-term deals with the Sox and the Bulls, which the company called “extremely unprofitable contracts” in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

The Sox could have to find another radio home, the best-case scenario, or continue airing games on a station that has publicly announced it wants to ditch them.

The worst-case scenario is no home at all.

“The teams remain confident in finding a radio broadcast solution for their fans, and together the Bulls and White Sox are exploring all options for a new radio home," the teams said in a statement.

A decision is expected Feb. 1, a couple of weeks before spring training begins in Glendale, Ariz. Can the Sox pull out a miracle before the season even starts?

Old-school Sox fans — the ones who don’t care to pay for cable or simply prefer announcers Ed Farmer and Darrin Jackson to their TV counterparts — are crossing their fingers and hoping the Sox remain on a major outlet so they can hear all the action in what figures to be a crossroads season.

With Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez making their Sox debuts last summer and Eloy Jimenez and Michael Kopech on deck in ’18, the outlook for the season is much brighter than it was one year ago, in spite of 2017’s 67-95 record and fourth-place finish.

Sox fans have bought into the rebuild and seem willing to go through the aches and pains of a non-contending team if it leads to long-term success. They watched it happen on the North Side in ’16 and then last season saw the Astros become World Series champions just four years after losing 111 games.

The Sox have been in this situation before, though not since the early 1970s when the franchise was in dire straits with inept ownership and a lack of foresight by the business operations department.

Photos of the White Sox's annual fan fest through the years.

After a disastrous season in 1970, no major outlet wanted to broadcast Sox games in ’71, forcing the team to air them on a group of small stations, including WTAQ-AM 1370, a 5,000-watt station out of LaGrange. When the WTAQ signal faded at night, fans had to try dialing in WJOL-FM in Joliet or WEAW-FM in Evanston.

It was maddening, but if you were a die-hard fan and couldn’t watch on TV, you had no other choice.

The budding popularity of announcer Harry Caray, who arrived in ’71, along with the acquisition of Dick Allen, who sparked a Sox resurgence in ’72, helped the franchise get a new deal with WMAQ-AM 670 in time for the ’73 season.

But the Sox eventually went back to their losing ways. After a brutal loss to the Yankees in late August of ’74, Caray bellowed to his Ch. 44 viewers: “It’s all downhill from here for this club.”

The more Caray raged, the more beloved he became on the South Side. Manager Chuck Tanner called him “a front-running, second-guessing liar.” Caray called Tanner “Nixon-like” and a “horse (bleep) manager.” Tanner called Caray “scum.”

It was a different time, of course. That kind of back-and-forth would never fly in an era when broadcasters can criticize teams but generally don’t get personal.

WMAQ already had announced during the summer of ’74 it was dropping Sox broadcasts after the season, leading Caray to rip the station on its own airwaves. When a Sox executive pleaded with Caray to stop his criticism, Caray told the Tribune the station was “showing (the Sox) up” with its decision.

“They’re telling the world that White Sox baseball is so uninteresting that they’re going to drop it,” Caray told Tribune columnist Gary Deeb.

Due in part to Caray’s popularity, WMAQ decided to continue airing Sox games in ’75, and they have remained on a major outlet since, moving around over the years.

Unlike the ’74 edition, this year’s team should be interesting even if it’s not contending.

Fans deserve a station that not only airs Sox games but considers the team a partner. Other than Steve Dahl, a Sox fan who enjoys talking about the rebuild on his show, none of the other WLS personalities seems to know the team exists.

WSCR-AM 670, the former home of Sox games and current flagship station of the Cubs, gives much more coverage to the Sox than the team’s own station. Go figure.

WLS’s owners clearly aren’t as patient as Sox fans and want out of the deal. It’s their prerogative, of course, though they shouldn’t have signed a six-year deal if they didn’t understand the risks.

Hopefully the Sox find a new home this year and listening to games on the front porch never goes out of style.